The "Greenbrier Ghost" is a story that is over one hundred years old and comes from the heart of Greenbrier County, West Virginia. It seems that in 1897 a young bride was murdered by her husband who claimed she died of natural causes. She was buried and life went on. However, the spirit of Zona Heaster Shue was not at peace because she was murdered by her blacksmith husband.  It seemed he would get away with it, without further investigation into her death. Her Mother prayed that Zona would appear to her as she felt there was something more sinister in the death of her precious daughter.  

It wasn't too long and Zona appeared before her Mother, Mary Heaster, telling her of her terrible death. She gave her Mother the details of what happened to her and other information that she had no way of knowing.  Her Mother went to the local authorities and convinced them to dig up the grave and have an autopsy done on Zona.  This was done and the Medical Examiner found her neck had been broken. The case then went to trial and the evidence provided by Mary Heaster and verified by the Medical Examiner was sufficient to convince the jury that Zona had been murdered by the strong hands of her husband, Edward Shue. Edward was convicted of murder and sent to prison. This was the first and only time, that we are aware of in the United States, that testimony, based on evidence provided by a ghost, had been used in a court of law to convict a person of murder.

Sharon and I decided to find the local cemetery where Zona was buried. We had no knowledge of the location. The Greenbrier Ghost Sign said, "nearby" and we started checking all of the local cemeteries we could find. After spending an afternoon searching without success, we decided to call it a day. That evening I came upon a comment that Zona was buried in the Soule Chapel Cemetery. I got my Good Sam CD out and started scanning the county for such a chapel. About an hour later I found it and not far from where we had started our search. Actually finding the church would prove to be even more difficult than finding it with the computer. My CD did not provide information on places, such as Coffin Hollow so our search had to be done while driving around in the areas that we had located.

We started the next day with my handwritten instructions on where Soule Chapel was located. We had forgotten that the road names on the CD do not always match the local names of roads. Such was the case here, we were looking for Old Kanawha Turnpike and no one had heard of it. Fortunately for us, we stopped and asked some people working in their yard if they had heard of Route 60, Route 2 or Old Kanawha Turnpike. They said no. I then had Sharon ask if they had heard of the Soule Chapel. The woman quickly smiled and said yes. Remember we were in the Bible Belt of West Virginia. We were only a few miles from the church. We thanked her and drove back to the main road which happened to be Kanawha Turnpike, although there were no signs indicating this at our location. We found the church and cemetery. Zona was buried with other family members. A little detective work goes a long way in solving not only crimes, but figuring out the locations of old cemeteries and old towns that have long since vanished. Local Postmasters are a wonderful resource for locating old sites.

Listen to one of the EVP captured at this cemetery. The voice says, "Tim didn't love her."

To return, hit the "Back" button.

---

Web Page created by Dr. Dave Oester, Webmaster

Copyrighted © 2002 by Dave Oester, All Rights Reserved